The present invention relates generally to crop harvesting machines and, more particularly, to disc mower-conditioners.
Disc mower-conditioners generally fall into two groups: those using a reel and those not using a reel. Disc mower-conditioners not having a reel utilize the action of the rotating disc cutters to convey severed crop material rearwardly toward the crop conditioner. This type of machine can be seen from the disc mower-conditioner illustrated, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,094,132, in U.S. Pat. No. 3,673,779 and in U.S. Pat. No. 3,656,284. The cutter unit has been constructed as a flat disc or an upright drum unit, while the crop conditioner has traditionally been either of the flail type or roll type construction. A major problem with such harvesting machines is that the severed crop material is not efficiently conveyed to the conditioning unit and is, thereby, subject to being recut by the disc cutters.
To increase the efficiency of conveying the severed crop material to the conditioning unit, a reel can be added, as can be seen, for example, in German Pat. No. 2,151,156. Generally, this reel has been positioned rearwardly of the disc cutterbar for use solely to assist in conveying crop material toward the conditioning unit before it has a chance to be recut. Since the reel is not positioned forwardly of the cutterbar, it could not be used to pick up downed crop material.
One of the problems encountered with disc mower-conditioners is the placement of conditioning rolls relative to the cutterbar. If the rolls are too close to the cutterbar, they tend to engage tall crop material before the cutterbar can sever it from the ground. On the other hand, the further the rolls are positioned rearwardly, the greater the feeding problem becomes, hence the addition of the reel on some disc mower-conditioners.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,940,910 represents an attempt to utilize the reel to pick up downed crop material before being severed by the rotating cutters and still convey severed crop material rearwardly toward the conditioning rolls. A scalloped floor member was positioned over the cutterbar for projection rearwardly toward the conditioning rolls. However, this particular floor member created feeding problems of its own, particularly with smaller pieces of severed crop material commonly referred to as "fines," because this floor member was so steep and of such shape as to hinder proper feeding to the conditioning rolls. In an effort to partially overcome these particular feeding problems, the reel included a preselected combination of long and short tines to correspond to the shape of the scalloped floor member.